Chapter 1

When I performed the pre-marital health screening for my best friend, Chloe, she tested positive for HIV.

Her eyes were red-rimmed as she begged me not to tell her boyfriend, Derek:

"Stella, please don't tell him. I love him so much. He’s the one for me. If he knows, he’ll never marry me."

Bound by my professional duty, I strongly advised her to inform him herself.

She swore up and down that she would.

In the medical recommendation section of the report, I wrote: [Marriage deferred / Not advisable for procreation].

A month later, Derek, leading eighteen other men, stormed into my office, furious.

They hacked at me twenty-eight times. Every single blow was meant to kill.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe standing by the door, a look of pure schadenfreude on her face. "Serves you right!" she sneered.

Even after I died, their rage wasn't sated. They didn't even leave a complete body.

They stuffed my dismembered remains into black garbage bags and dumped them in the city's grimiest corners.

Reborn, I found myself back at the moment Chloe and Derek came for their pre-marital health screening.

Again, I wrote "Marriage deferred / Not advisable for procreation."

I closed my eyes, hiding the hatred boiling within, and swore to make every single one of them pay in blood.

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